OK, I see my "guesses" were completely wrong.

You'll be extremely lucky to make any use of your barlow lens on that
scope. Your scope is basically a 3" reflector. Applying the apeture rule
of thumb, that means you'll get a maximum of 150x magnification from your
scope. That mean when it's perfectly stable, on a night with perfect seeing
conditions.

Your 5mm eyepiece gives you 140x magnification without the barlow. So take
that as the top limit for your scope, it'll be about right.
Your selectable eyepiece, can also be used without the barlow. and will give
a good range of magnification. Coving most of your scope range. With the
20mm providing a good lowest magnification and wide field. I wouldn't
bother with the barlow lens, but you might find that it works when observing
the moon.

I think in general that there's a few things you should do. Firstly get a
book like "Turn Left at Orion" it'll give you directions of how to find
loads of astronomical features that your scope can see. It's directed at
people who use Bino's and Small to medium sized scopes. The other thing
that would be worth doing is trying to make your tripod and scope more
ridged. Stephen Tonkin's post is an excellent starting place.

Also, there should be an Astronomy Society near to you. There's quite a few
in the UK, it's worth contacting them, as there will be people there with
their own scopes and will be able to offer more assistance than anyone on a
net connection.

Another thing that is worth doing is check out the collomation of the scope.
To do this, wait for the scope to cool down, then find a conveniant bright
star and focus it into a point. Next slowly move the focus knob, so that
the star goes slightly out of focus. The star will appear to get bigger,
then a hole will appear in the middle. If it's off to one side your scope
is not collomated correctly. It'll be worth adjusting this so that the hole
is in the center of the star. I find that collomating with a low power
(i.e. your 20mm) eyepiece first, then switching to a slightly higher power
(your 18mm, then 16 etc) and repeating until you've got to your highest
power eyepiece is the easiest way. You might find that you can then see a
little more detail on Jupiter. With your scope, I'd expect to be able to
make out the cloud bands, but don't try to see the Great Red Spot. I'm
saying that because I struggle to see it in an 8" Telescope, and some of my
friends can't see it in a scope that size.

Hope this gives you a little more to go on.

Regards

Colin Dawson
www.cjdawson.com


"troll hunter" wrote in message
...
thanks again colin, and as promised here are the specs to this tube :O)

ill start with listing the eyepeices :- f5mm, h20mm,2 x barlow, and also
one that does it all type gizmo -ie it does these magnifications by way of
moving the selector around .. ie 6mm/8mm/12mm/15mm/18mm.

Now ill list the tubes spec which is :- f= 700mm d= 76mm ohh and it says
underneath this data "coated optics" btw - this is not guided by any
computer/electronic means - only by my good judgment , and my olympic size
forearm(they never used to be large but moving a scope about rigorasly
does
make one appear more muscular :O)

Colin, i did attempt to align the scope and spotter by lining up the tube
with the target as your goodself recomended...but this coupled with that
tripod..made it rather annoying! but i did get a good look at jupiter and
what looked like a pearl necklace of moons - all 4 of them! however
jupiter
itself looked a bright ball - no disearnable detail :O(

over to you sir :O)



"Colin Dawson" wrote in message
...
Hi Troll hunter.

I think I've used one of these scope a couple of years back. I'm
assuming
that it's the same scope that you're using....

It's a 4.5" newtonian Reflector with a Focal Length 1000mm. Possibly
called the Tasco StarGuide 114. If my guess is right I know the scope.
For
those not familier with the Tasco's it's almost identical to the
Celestron
NexStar 114GT it's just that it's got a smaller object database and is
painting in the Tasco colours.

Here's a link to the NexStar scope for reference.
http://www.celestron.com/prod_pgs/tel/nx114gt.htm

And here's the tasco.


http://sale-depot.co.uk/camera-photo...lesco pe.html

Ok ok, enought with the Guess work.


Now for some helpful hints...

You'll need to do a little math to work out what magnification your
eyepieces *should* give you. When you use an eyepiece in combination
with
the Barlow double the magnification. Now you know what the eyepieces
give,
you'll need to know how to drive the magnification. The basic rule of
thumb
is 50x per Inch of apeture. In the case of your scope that's the
diameter
of the main mirror. This should work out to about 225x ish, on a
perfect
night. Taking the british weather into account, and sky pollution etc,
you
would be extremely lucky to get to over about 180x, and even that is
optimistic. Don't let this put you off though, as a smaller image will
be
brighter and with a little practice you'll be ableo to pick out alot of
detail.

The floppyness of the mount is a problem with tripods. Some people add
weight to their tripod to help reduce the shaking effect. I find, on my
scope, that keeping the legs retracted helps to work better. It's worth
a
try, as it may help a little.

These is also something that you can do to help recude the shaking. That
is
to not touch the scope whilst looking through the eyepiece. This way
the
scope can do it's think with you getting in it's way. Also as your
detached
from the scope, you'll not be pressing down and possibly causing some
movement in the scope.

You might also be able to come up with some ingenious solution that will
tie
the tripod legs together and make them more ridgid.

Hope this helps

Regards

Colin Dawson
www.cjdawson.com